In the past few decades, the study on site effects of seismic ground motions induced by surface geology and subsurface structures (Effects of Surface Geology on seismic motion, ESG) are progressing for understanding strong ground motion characteristics during disastrous earthquakes and for predicting strong ground motions for future events, with increasing numbers of strong motion data and computer powers. There are still huge earthquake disasters occurring all over the world and the researches for quantification of ESG should be emphasized for earthquake disaster mitigations because of their significant influence on strong motions. In this coming summer, the 5th International Conference on Effects of Surface Geology on Seismic Motions (ESG5) will be held in Taipei, Taiwan and there are about 140 papers from over 20 countries to be presented. On this occasion, we would like to propose to publish special issue or issues for recent progress of study on ESG in EPS journal to share the present status on this study area. We are expecting that many of the authors who contribute to ESG5 will submit their papers to this EPS special issue(s) but we would not exclude any authors who do not participate in ESG5 but write relevant papers. We believe that this special issue(s) will attract broad spectrum of readers and contribute to stimulate discussion on new paradigms of future ESG studies and seismology in general.

Although rotational seismology has progressed in recent decades, the links between rotational ground motion and site soil conditions are poorly documented. New experiments were performed on Kefalonia Island (G...

The consideration of soil nonlinearity is important for the accurate estimation of the site response. To evaluate the soil nonlinearity during the 2008 Ms8.0 Wenchuan Earthquake, 33 strong-motion records obtai...

On October 21, 2016, an earthquake with Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) magnitude 6.6 hit the central part of Tottori Prefecture, Japan. This paper demonstrates two notable effects of the surface geology on ...

The Himalayan collision zone experiences many seismic activities with large earthquakes occurring at certain time intervals. The damming of the proto-Bagmati River as a result of rapid mountain-building proces...

Most modern seismic codes account for site effects using an amplification factor (AF) that modifies the rock acceleration response spectra in relation to a “site condition proxy,” i.e., a parameter related to ...

As observational evidence of 3-D microtremor horizontal-to-vertical spectral ratios (MHVRs), previous studies have shown that a significant directional dependency is observed in and around Uji campus, Kyoto Un...

Microtremor H/V spectral ratio (MHVSR) has gained popularity to assess the dominant frequency of soil sites. It requires measurement of ground motion due to seismic ambient noise at a site and a relatively simple...

We compared the long-period ground motion observed in the Tokyo Bay area during two shallow M6.7 earthquakes that occurred in northern Nagano Prefecture, Japan, on March 12, 2011, and November 22, 2014. The ma...

We applied a stochastic method for the finite-fault modeling of strong ground motions to the 2016 Meinong, Taiwan earthquake. Newly developed attenuation models in Southern Taiwan with the frequency-dependent Q =...

We analyzed S-wave horizontal-to-vertical (S-H/V) spectral ratios at six ocean bottom seismograph (OBS) sites of K-NET located in the Sagami Bay area of Japan for nonlinear site responses. The degree of nonlin...